Issue

Recently I was facing an issue where Windows Server 2012 R2 reported remaining 22% of free disk space of one of the Exchange Server data volumes. The Exchange Server data volumes are connected using mount points.

Before trying to identify any issues in regards to hidden system files or streams, I checked the volume shadow copy configuration using the Disk Management MMC.

Windows Disk Management showed that volume C: was using a mounted volume as shadow copy target.

Examining the available disk space using the Get-Diskspace.ps1 PowerShell script, it showed that WMI was reporting the FreeSpace the same way as the Disk Management.

The vssadmin tool does not clearly state the path to the shadow copy volume. Therefore, it is much more convenient to identify the shadow copy target using Disk Management. But the output shows that the shadow copy is nearly six months old. So it's safe to delete this orphaned shadow copy.

You can easily delete all shadow copies of a selected volume using the following command

vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all

But it turned out that the shadow copy could not be deleted, even with administrative credentials in use.

Needless to say, that a well-known third party solution is in use to backup the servers. The shadow copy remainers are copies created by the backup solution and were not properly removed after backup due to a system failure during backup.

But how can you remove the current shadow copy without tempering the exisiting permissions for your account?

Simply use the Disk Management MMC to modifx the current shadow copy configuration and the shadow copy is removed.

Now open the Settings windows for the source volume again and change the Located on this volume to be the same as the source volume anfd change the Use Limit to the same value for the volume that is configured on other servers.